“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

This very nice lady left a couple of comments on my post, Another piece of the puzzle. In the second comment, she mentioned that she had “discovered how to flip through a county’s death certificates for a certain month and year, so if I can’t find what I’m looking for, I browse.”

I have been looking for the death certificates for 2 unnamed infants buried with my great-grandparents in Oakwood Cemetery in Fort Worth. Through census records, I found the name of 1 infant, Lella L Carr. The second infant is not recorded in any census. Both infants are listed as “infant of J D Carr” in the Texas Death Index 1903-2000 at Ancestry.com, so I have dates of death for both. A couple of days ago, I was able to find the actual death certificate for 1 infant at Footnote, but not the other, even though both are in the Index.

Following Debbie’s lead, I went back to FamilySearch Record Search and browsed the year of 1920 for surname Carr. And there is was: the second death certificate!

Here is the first certificate, found at Footnote:

And here is the second certificate, found at FamilySearch Record Search:

It is interesting that although this infant’s name, according to the 1920 US Federal Census enumeration, is Lella L Carr, her death certificate simply reads, “Inf Carr”. Sad.

The grave that contains these remains and those of my great-grandparents at Oakwood Cemetery in unmarked. My cousin wants to get a headstone placed, but really wanted names and dates for the 2 infants to be inscribed on the stone. Now we have them!

The moral of the story? Don’t assume that because a document that is not found at one site, it therefore is not to be found at a second site! Both Footnote and FamilySearch Record Search contain the Texas Death Certificates database, but they do not contain the same database items. Always check and recheck!